@johngalt - Thank you very much! Most of my fabrics I've sourced direct from the manufacturers, the goretex I got as overstock fabric inventory from one of the many local Vancouver garment factories.

30-day DIY Techwear Design Challenge - Day23 - The Universal Bag

For day 23 I expanded on the idea of making things from a single piece of fabric. This time with a wild little duffle+sling+messenger+backpack+tote bag... without any actual straps or handles fixed to the outside. Instead I put an obscene number of Fidlock Snap M Low buckles all over the exterior - 12 in total. The result is a cool little bag that you can pretty much carry however you want, simply disconnect the straps and preposition them to suit your carry style. Also I have visions of modular pockets/pouches/mod systems that could be clipped to the exterior. Since the straps come off easily, you could even colour code straps to match your daily outfits, ha!

I made today's bag super beefy and durable. The outside is Coverlight Nylon Neoprene which makes the exterior pretty indestructible - this is not the aramid hypalon I've used previously which would also make it quite fire/acid resistant. I used super duty 65LB bonded nylon thread and I double or triple stitched all the seams. Because this bag is made from a single section of fabric there's no seams to fail along the sides or bottom, which further increases the durability as weight is distributed across the whole bag. Another amazing benefit of Coverlight is that small holes -like those made by the needle while sewing- self heal and seal back up making this thing very watertight. To make the interior more visible and to keep the liner in the same ultra durable spirit as the exterior I used a bright yellow VX21 HS DRW X-Pac. Topped of with giant #10 zippers from Lenzip, this model is typically used in marine boat covers and such... very strong, very resilient, very waterproof.

The webbing used for the straps today is my first attempt at having a fully custom webbing weave of my own design manufactured. I wanted a diagonal style herringbone weave in a strong and abrasion resistant nylon, woven with an aesthetic more typical of polyester seatbelt webbing. I'll take a moment to note that 'seatbelt' webbing is not fancy... its the cheapest crap there is, and although it looks silky and luxurious its quite delicate when compared to typical nylon webbing. Seatbelt webbing is also quite thick and doesn't lock well in buckle adjusters, so I had this webbing woven to a thinner profile with a textured edge. The result both slides and locks well in most buckles I've tested it with. Unfortunately the colour is WAY off... this was supposed to be a metallic copper finish, more pinkish like the metal itself... instead I got a burnt bronze effect. But this is part of the process of having new products manufactured, the sample roll of webbing I received was sent to me labelled "color approval sample" and I've taken the steps to hopefully correct the issue in my next sample before I go ahead and have the minimum quantity manufactured (In this case it will likely be about 300-500M at about 40cents per yard + sampling costs).

Today was a total success in my mind. The 1 piece bag came out exactly as I had hoped... and the fidlock buckle system is so much fun to play with! There's a great deal of potential for further modifications, additions, and even entirely new products to be explored which can take advantage of the exterior attachment points. Also with more time I'll explore some connections inside the pack to also include modular internals.

That wraps day 23! Thank you so much for reading and following along. As always please share your thoughts or suggestions. Tomorrow I'm going to take a crack at a hybrid street/tactical vest, so tune in then for that!

Day 24 is behind me... only now I'm falling asleep at my desk so I'm going to leave a teaser here now and the gallery link and ill be back in the -late- morning to write the full post. Its again after 4am on my end of the wire and as the photos below will no doubt show... this was my most ambitious day yet (...ever) and I'm completely exhausted. See you in the morning with the full post.

[edit]

Bit of a change of pace for day 24... as I am posting todays project the morning after. Yesterday may have been my most ambitious project undertaking ever, let alone this challenge... and by the time I got to organizing and images and writing captions for the post I found myself falling asleep at my desk. So I slept in the studio last night so I could wake this morning to get day 24 posted.

Yesterday I took on my take on a minimalist urban city pack. The past week or so I've been really stoked on the idea of 1 piece patterns. So I started the day drafting up a sleek pack shape that featured a mostly 1pc exterior shell. There are to main compartments on this pack, the one next to body has a large zipper pocket and a laptop sleeve as well as room enough for a couple organizer pouches. The front compartment is divided with two removable internal no-waste pouches, one of which quickly detaches and turns into a little slingpack.

The handle on this bag was an idea I borrowed from some early Mystery Ranch designs, featuring a loop of webbing that travels nearly all the way around the exterior of the pack, through several sewn channels. The result is thee possible carry handle locations; when carried the two handles not in use lay flat. (PS. for anyone interested in bag design do some research into Mystery Ranch, and it's founder Dana Gleason... nearly every single meaningful innovation in backpack and carry design in the past 20years has come from this one man... hes the god of bags). There's also a couple floating G-hooks attached to the carry handle which can hide inside a small pocket when not in use... in the future I'd like to come up with external pockets and mod systems which take advantage of these.

The pack straps are fully modular and attach to the pack at both the top and bottom with fidlock connections, which means that straps can be hot swapped to suit the carry load or to change the aesthetics to match ones outfit... or to remove any pesky danlgers when going through security at the airport. Also I added a little "hood" at the shoulder area which both houses and protects the fidlocks while providing additional stability for the removable straps. This hood creates a nice little cover which hugs the back of the neck and prevents water from getting between the pack and your body.

Made from neurotically stitched VX42 X-pac... so this bag is very stiff and super durable. The beefy #8 waterproof zippers ensure things stay weathertight. Some of the liner pieces are cordura ultra 1000D (mostly to reduce the out of pocket cost on this item.) Webbing is a custom heavy duty weave from ChunWoHoCo. And the spacer mesh used throughout is very thick (3/8") for added comfort and comes from Apex mills, who produce what is in my experience the longest lasting spacer textiles.

Thank you for all the support so far! Please never hesitate to post comments, questions, concerns, etc. Tune in later tonight for day25!

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Made an account to say how impressed I am with all this, really great work here. When I was in art school second years in apparel most definitely weren't producing on this level, and as someone who's only just begun to dabble in soft goods this is such a great resource. Excited to see what's next!

ps. What is the oversized plastic snap closure if you don't mind me asking?

@danii - I'll admit this was too much for a day. I'm utterly drained this morning... gunna be a simple project kinda day today. Thanks for posting!

@gantz - Re:fidlocks, you create hole and thread the two halves together. I add a bit of cement between threads to ensure a permanent bond that wont rotate and change the socket orientation over time. Re: project, thank you so much for the kind words... this was an overly ambitious idea going in, and I'm tremendously satisfied with the result.

@DROVES - wow... thank you so much for taking the time to sign up and post! That's awesome of you. The big plastic 'nipples' all over the pack are from a brand known as Fidlock. Specifically used in the universal bag are the Fidlock Snap M Low connectors.

"Do something simple" I said, "Keep it easy"... famous last words began day 25... by the end of the day that intention was no-where to be found as I took on my first attempt a production volume sewing! I made 70x! no-waste pouches that I'm going to raffle off and giveaway!

This 30-day challenge has become so much more than I ever could have anticipated when I started. The community support that has followed and pushed me along every step of the way has exploded this idea into so much more than I ever intended. I want to try and show some appreciation for all the kind words and interest in my work; and very early on it was suggested to me that I hold a raffle of some kind. After some pondering on how to do that I came up with the idea of seeing how many no-waste pouches I could make in a 12hour period, and then hold a giveaway raffle and ship away the days results to a few winners.

I have a total of 70x pouches available, which I'd like to pair up into sets of three. And next week I'll hold a raffle by some means which anyone interested is welcome to enter!

The only caveat I have to ask is that contestants be willing to pay for the shipping from me-to-you because otherwise I couldn't afford to send out ~24packages?!?!

In order to also incorporate this project into my schooling, I'd like to call these things "user experience research prototypes" and ask that winners keep in touch and share with me their likes and pains so that I may document the feedback as part of my final project.

And to anyone whose been kind enough to post a comment, or send me a message, if you'd like to enter the raffle I'll count each of your posts made before this announcement as an extra ticket!

So tune in soon... I'm going to figure out how to manage this whole raffle business by the end of the challenge and start sending these little pouches out to new homes!!!!

Thank you again to everyone!

Edited February 28, 2018 by the-intern

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That's awesome! For the raffle, you might look into using a simple Google Form. They're pretty easy to set up, and can be quite useful. You can create a pretty generic form that just has very few required fields such as:

Name/SuFu username/email
Shipping Address

The best part is all the responses are collected in a google spreadsheet. From there, you can add a column to the end, add a random number generator for values in that column, then sort by that column and that's how you can choose random winners.

Collecting shipping payment is a different beast. Maybe the easiest method is to pick an approximate shipping cost and just have everyone entering paypal/venmo/bitcoin you payment as an entry fee?

I'm so excited today for so many reasons! I'll try and contain myself long enough to get this post together! :S

First up, its day 26 now... and I got a package in the mail this morning that has taken a few trips around the world and back again to get to me. A few months ago I negotiated myself an order for a small amount of a very very new type of textile, the worlds lightest waterproof breathable fabric to be precise. I thought my fairly hefty purchase fee was lost as every time I went to track my inbound parcel it seemed like it was on a new continent... none of them near my own. But it finally showed up!

For reference, a single sheet of 8.5x11 paper pulled from printer comes in at about 4.6Grams

the same size cut of GoreTex 3L Pro is 12.5Grams

this new Dyneema Breathable is only 2.5grams... almost 1/2 the weight of standard paper stock!??!?

I got my paws on 7yards of fabric, enough to prototype and produce about 4-5jackets in my size (small) of which I expect one will come out finished quality. So what I'm going to do is extend this project from 1day to 3days... because I'm pretty sure 24hours would be beyond impossible. Today will be day 1 where I'm going to tease you with a few shots of the fabric itself as well as what I hope is a 1piece pattern which should turn into a slim fitting alpine style coat complete with pockets and pit vents.. I've spent about 19hours on drafting this pattern so-far and I expect there will be many changes made as I begin cutting a sewing shape tests.

My aim is to try and break the world record for lightest waterproof jacket... while also including the following features typically omitted from such items: inbuilt stuff pocket, breathability vents, 4x pockets, and fully zipped front. The entire body of the garment will be limited to just one piece of fabric, including any cord channels and pockets. The only second pattern piece I'm allowing myself is for the hood... it's simply not physically possible to get the jacket style I want with the hood built into the 1piece pattern. The current record is 114gram pullover, using a textile so delicate that backpack straps will tear it to shreds... I'm going to aim to hit under 80grams with a fully featured and durable coat that can folded up and carried like a wallet in my back pocket.

The textile I'm using comes from DSM corporation and is composed primarily of Dyneema (a brand name for UHMWPE aka 'ultra high molecular weight polyethylene') which is the strongest lightest textile on earth. About 8-12x stronger than steel! The breathability is provided with a very cleverly engineered ePTFE (aka Teflon, aka expanded polytetrafluoroethylene, aka the same chemical in GoreTex) which has a sophisticated targeted application technology putting the membrane only where the fabric is porous and saving the weight where the facing fabric wouldn't breathe regardless.

Secondly, I've been offered a dream job!!!!! and today should technically be day 27!? I spent a good portion day 26 in video conference with a major apparel brand who'll be flying me out for a face-to-face meet early next month! In addition... going through my inboxes yesterday I've received more interest and opportunity than I can begin to process right now... it's looking like I may not only have employment secured, but I'll have options as to where I want to land! I'm practically in tears I'm so happy! Thank you everyone!!!

Lastly, The pouch giveaway raffle will begin with tomorrows post. So check back on day 27 to find out how to enter!

That's an end to day 26... Once I get the Instagram running I'm going to celebrate the rest of the day the pub methinks! Tomorrow I'm going to take the hyperlight jacket a little further and dive into cutting and sewing shape tests! Tune in then.

Edited March 2, 2018 by the-intern

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That's awesome! For the raffle, you might look into using a simple Google Form. They're pretty easy to set up, and can be quite useful. You can create a pretty generic form that just has very few required fields such as:

Name/SuFu username/email
Shipping Address

Probably should refrain from asking for shipping address up front from all entrants and just limit that to later for the winners only.

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Dream Job? Might need to change your user name. Well deserved attention and not surprising that opportunities are on deck given the work you've done. Look forward to seeing that 79gram jacket. Part of me wishes they could do something more with colour on that fabric, but a different part of me likes the brutalism.

@CB200 - Thank you much for the support. Perhaps dream is a stretch but a significant leap beyond my expectations anyhow. I'll play around with dye treatments and see what fun effects can be had. Though I suspect, due to the chemistry, non-factory colour options will be unlikely.

Sorry for the lack of updates everyone. Getting instagram caught up has been an epic chore... but that's all done now. I'll post this evening an update on the hyperlight jacket project. I've been sewing up a number of shape tests in various textiles and pattern revisions to test the idea.

I've also got a form setup for the raffle. so I'll post that this evening as well!

Also I've got instagrams @BrotherJopa doing an epic typographic mural on a piece of polartec neoshell which I'll craft a second coat from... I cant wait to sew up his artwork!

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Damn, here I was busy with work for a few days whilst spamming you with likes from two accounts on instagram and now I find all these awesome news as well as a give away lottery!

Really, really happy to hear about your dream job offer, WELL DESERVED, can't wait to see which major brand you might be working for soon!
Whoever it may be I hope they will offer you a proper challenge since you seem to have already the skill to create whatever you want.
Can't wait to see that insane jacket project completed, too! Can you tell me how much that fabric costed? it being so amazing I can't begin to imagine the pricetag

I would ofc also love to enter the pouch give away lottery, please tell me how to enter if it's still not too late!

Cheers and keep making these amazing pieces! I will make sure to follow and support your future work!

@gantz - Haha thank you for the likes my friend! I wholeheartedly welcome the congrats as well... it's been an INSANE week!!! life's weird yo!?! The DSM textile was about 80$USD a yard. And as for pouch raffles... look below!

30-day Techwear Design Challenge - Raffle Entry!

Hello again everyone! Sorry for the delays... it's taken me a bit longer than expected to get Instagram all caught up to real-time, also figuring out the details for the pouch raffle ate more time than expected.

However progress has been steady, in between getting the online out of the way I've been cutting and sewing a whole bunch of variations and shape tests of my 1-piece coat pattern. I've got 5x test jackets sewn up so far in several different textiles. The idea of a 1piece coat which actually fits to form is from what I can find in my research... an entirely new concept. So before I dove into cutting up the expensive hyperlight dyneema textile I wanted to prove the concept first. Later this evening when my friend shows up to take photos for me I'll post my results so far!

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The past couple days I've been working on getting the concept for the 1-piece jacket ironed out.

Inevitably I'll be making this in the Dyneema textile shown previously with the intentions of reducing as much weight as possible to create the worlds lightest jacket, also made from a single piece of textile.

You can check out a small gallery of my progress so far here!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀In order to better prove the concept I decided to make several variations of the 1-piece pattern, exploring different fits and geometries. This also let me explore ideas like integrating the hood into the pattern, adding ventilation around the pits, and even building in hand-pockets. ⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀All the images shown today are 1-piece, some ideas were more successful than others. For day 30 I'll be combining the successes from each of these tests into what I hope will be a record breaking jacket!⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Thanks for reading tune in tomorrow to see how this all turns out! ⠀⠀⠀

@gantz - Thank you! I've discovered that articulation is best achieved when patterning and measurements are considered with the arms up. When patterned to fit the body in this extreme position the difficulty turns from "how do I get the range of movement" to a game of "how can I get the excess fabric to sit attractively when the arm is at rest"... which i find to much a much more approachable challenge. Have a take a looksee at a digitized and mildly updated pattern for variant two below, I added a body to make it more clear as to how it will sit:

I had to move into illustrator yesterday to make the final tweaks more rapidly than redrafting this giant pattern with each change. Once I get things dialed this evening I'll project it onto my wall to scale and trace out the final pattern by hand... if I had a 60" plotter printer it would be a different story, however I got a quote of over 200$ to print this pattern... so I'll have to project and trace! I'll gladly share the final pattern (size small) once complete... grading this to different sizes is going to be a bit of a feat methinks.

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@the-intern Thanks a lot for the insightful process description. It does make a lot of sense to start with arms up. This the same stance (t-pose) that is mostly used when rigging a 3D character model for later animation. Similarly this helps preventing weird pinching/stretching of the 3D mesh and applied textures.

The pattern looks incredible! Just as a 2D artpiece alone... this would look even more amazing if printed large for let's say an exhibiton especially if you'd use dark-grey tinted paper, the anatomic reference simply printed in black on top and then the pattern outlines themselves screen printed in a lighter color on top of that. Sorry... mind's going astray

@gantz - The patterning is actually even more extreme than is depicted... and far more awkward than I am comfortable to document. To beginI taped a bunch of measuring tapes to my bareskin torso and took note of movements in my mirror....then carefully measured the difference in body shape with my arms fully upright towards the sky and slightly forwards compared to pointed forwards towards the horizon. if it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid... but it certainly looked stupid at the time!

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@the-intern Oh wow, that does sound complicated. Btw. this might be a silly question but I really have little knowledge of fashion design education. Does every student at your university learn or even has to learn such advanced patterning and sewing/bonding techniques? Obviously, the proper skill comes with proper motivation and practice but I'm curious to know if you were taught all these techniques in your program or if you taught most of them yourself.

@the-intern Oh wow, that does sound complicated. Btw. this might be a silly question but I really have little knowledge of fashion design education. Does every student at your university learn or even has to learn such advanced patterning and sewing/bonding techniques? Obviously, the proper skill comes with proper motivation and practice but I'm curious to know if you were taught all these techniques in your program or if you taught most of them yourself.

@gantz - the way I figure it, I have a short period of time to leverage the resources available to me as a student... so I do everything I can to take advantage. By my figuring about 90% of my tuition has been allocated to things other than classroom lectures... I fight hard with my school and work to ensure that my energies are equally divided away from the classroom. On the flipside; I'd live at the campus if they'd let me... and I do find the chance sometime to sneak a night under a table here and there but it's not approved of. I just want to spend as much time in a studio failing... failing often... and failing while I have the chance, because once thrown into industry expectations the opportunity for failure shrinks drastically! My foremost passion happens to be darted patterning and the chemical material sciences so that's where my time has gone in my studies... but damn near every young eager innovator I've met in school and industry is out there killing it in their own ways. And unfortunately it's often the case that the lower ranks of the food-chain are omitted from the credit they contributed. I'd wager that a large percentage of really wild innovations from large companies have come -at least in part- from students, interns and junior designers... i think it's as simple as we're too stupid or stubborn or inexperienced to know what wont work! hahaha

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@the-intern I see. those two main interests of yours truly are best suited for tech wear then! And the way you describe your experience at that school reminds me of some universities I experienced as well. I'm a design student myself (integrated design programme) though more focused on work right now. My university is more theoretical, so while it doesn't have the best equipment it's actually all about discourse and interdisciplinary projects. However I did have the oppurtunity to study abroad in Hong Kong and Japan at two respectable schools and their systems, at least where I went to were quite the opposite... much closer to what you are describing. The bigger the name the more they charge, the more they charge the bigger the names of lecturers. The bigger the names of the lecturers the more those lecturers talked about themselves instead of teaching/working with the students. I'm not trying to generalize, only refering to what I expenrienced at those particular design universities. As always, you could be at the "best" university, pay a shit ton of money and graduate being lazily useless.

That being said, you are showing here how it should be done properly! Keep it up

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@gantz - the way I figure it, I have a short period of time to leverage the resources available to me as a student... so I do everything I can to take advantage. By my figuring about 90% of my tuition has been allocated to things other than classroom lectures... I fight hard with my school and work to ensure that my energies are equally divided away from the classroom. On the flipside; I'd live at the campus if they'd let me... and I do find the chance sometime to sneak a night under a table here and there but it's not approved of. I just want to spend as much time in a studio failing... failing often... and failing while I have the chance, because once thrown into industry expectations the opportunity for failure shrinks drastically! My foremost passion happens to be darted patterning and the chemical material sciences so that's where my time has gone in my studies... but damn near every young eager innovator I've met in school and industry is out there killing it in their own ways. And unfortunately it's often the case that the lower ranks of the food-chain are omitted from the credit they contributed. I'd wager that a large percentage of really wild innovations from large companies have come -at least in part- from students, interns and junior designers... i think it's as simple as we're too stupid or stubborn or inexperienced to know what wont work! hahaha

It's always nice to see someone so motivated and working with something they're passionate about.

The little insight into your pattern making was interesting too, thanks for posting that.

30-day DIY Techwear Design Challenge - FINALE!WORLDS LIGHTEST JACKET - Part 3of3⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Just a quick teaser for now, as it's about 3:30 am in my studio and I'm long overdue for a goods nights sleep.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀The 30DAY CHALLENGE IS COMPLETE! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀And to wrap it up, I present the worlds lightest jacket. Fully featured with 4 pockets in this iteration, an adjustable hood, fashionable form fitting cut, and full front zip... also made from just one single piece of fabric (except the hood which is an extra piece, it's simply not possible to fit a hood within the width of a roll of fabric with this fit of coat).⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀My prototype weighs under 85G, with LOTS of room for reductions. I estimate a final product manufactured with technologies unavailable to me in my studio will come around 68-70G. The current record holding coat, a boxy fit pullover with no pockets to speak of, weighs 114G... so my 1-piece jacket is nearly 1/2 of the standing record. If you search Google for the lightest jacket on the market today you'll find a windbreaker called the "Feather" which weighs a hefty 143G.I'm calling this a HUGE success!Already wheels are in motion to make this available as a purchasable product. Tune in for an official announcement in the next few weeks on that front. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Thanks everyone for following along.Tomorrow I'll update with the final product and build log!-end-